Smart sellers have realized that it is much more profitable to price according to the way customers value their product and what they are willing to pay for it. Their costs have no effect on that. There is no longer a correlation between cost and price because there is no correlation between cost and what the consumer is willing to pay.
You are buying the "text itself". And why is that so expensive? Because the publisher will, in many cases, have paid the author a considerable sum for the right to sell it. The one thing that is common to all versions is the content. This is the primary source of value and, since it's common to all versions, the price between versions won't vary all that much.
But the price will vary depending on secondary attributes like the type of binding, method of delivery, etc. The hardcover is the premium most expensive version of the product. It appeals to people who don't just want the content, they want it in a specific format, one that will look good sitting on their bookshelf. They are willing to pay extra for that. Publishers count on hardcover sales to recoup a large part of their production costs. This is why a new ebook almost costs as much as a hardcover and is normally more expensive than a paperback.
I also think a professionally-produced ebook still costs the same to write, edit, revise, proofread, advertise, promote, make cover art for, get reviewed by lawyers for potentially-libelous content. Your local library is also paying more for ebooks since agency pricing was implemented. Very early on, publishers realized that e-books do not have as much legal protections as physical books do, because they are considered a service and not a product.
The Toronto Public Library have been providing some very illuminating figures that really drive home how expensive ebooks really are. Interested in checking out the new David Baldacci novel The Escape? Good e-Reader recently conducted research and polled over 1, people on ebook pricing. Publishers do not report on ebook sales anymore during their financial report.
This is because year on year they have declined since They would act as the gatekeepers to the customers that authors so desperately wanted their books to reach. The entire system worked for decades. That system rewarded the book publishers very well.
They were the most valuable party in the bookstore, author, publisher equation. So how does that translate into ebooks costing so much?
The answer lies in self-publishing. Book publishers are paying higher royalties on ebooks because of self-publishing. This is massively disrupting the control that the book publishers have had for decades over authors. This seismic disruption in control is causing the royalties that publishers are paying for ebooks to be way higher than they pay for print books.
This is much higher than the average of around 7.
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